Every Designer Needs a Voodoo Doll
There are moments in every creative career when professionalism requires… accessories.
Not the glamorous kind.
Not a new laptop.
Not a Pantone book.
Not another beautifully organized set of markers you will absolutely swear you needed.
I’m talking about a voodoo doll.
Now, before anyone gets nervous, this is a metaphorical voodoo doll. Mostly.
Because if you have worked with clients for any length of time, you know there are moments when someone asks you to make the logo bigger after you have already explained why it should not be bigger. Or sends you seventeen rounds of revisions that somehow circle all the way back to version one. Or says, “I’ll know it when I see it,” as though that is an actionable creative brief.
And in those moments, you need somewhere for the frustration to go.
Not into the email.
Definitely not into the email.
That is what the doll is for.
The imaginary little pin goes in while you type:
“Absolutely. Happy to make that adjustment.”
Another pin:
“Of course. I can explore that direction.”
And possibly one very enthusiastic pin when the client says, “Can we just see one more option?”
Then something magical happens.
You get over it.
Because the truth is, being a professional creative isn’t about never getting frustrated. That would be impossible. Creative work is deeply personal, even when you’re being paid to do it. You think about the problem. You develop an idea. You refine it. You make a hundred tiny decisions no one else will ever notice.
Then someone looks at it for twelve seconds and says, “What if it were blue?”
There is going to be a reaction.
When I was younger, client indecision made me much crazier than it does today.
I remember one situation where clients could not decide what color they wanted a headline to be. Rather than keep rebuilding the piece over and over in different colors, I made glasses with different colored gels in them.
They could literally put on a pair and see the headline through another color.
Red. Blue. Green. Whatever we were debating that day.
It was probably ridiculous.
But it worked.
And in retrospect, that was really the same lesson I eventually learned about the imaginary voodoo doll: sometimes you have to find a way to redirect the frustration instead of letting it take over the process.
The trick is knowing what to do with it.
Over the years, I’ve learned that the best designers develop private ways of blowing off steam. We laugh. We complain to another designer. We walk away from the computer. We mutter things that probably should not be entered into the official project notes.
And then we come back.
That last part matters.
Because the client does not need to pay for our frustration. They need us to solve the problem.
Sometimes they are wrong.
Sometimes we are wrong.
Sometimes they are asking for something ridiculous because they do not yet know how to explain what is actually bothering them.
And sometimes that terrible suggestion they made leads you somewhere unexpectedly good.
That is the strange relationship between creativity and irritation: irritation can either shut you down or push you toward a better solution.
The voodoo doll is simply the place where the irritation goes so the creativity can stay.
It lets you separate the emotional reaction from the professional response.
Pin.
Done.
Now what is the problem we are actually trying to solve?
That is when the job gets interesting again.
And by the time the client receives the next round, they do not need to know that somewhere between versions B and C, their tiny imaginary fabric likeness had a very difficult afternoon.
They just need to know that you listened.
You solved it.
And somehow, despite everything, you still made the work better.
Every designer needs a voodoo doll.
Just never send it with the final files.
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